Costa Rica 3

Hello everyone, I hope this finds you all doing well. It is my first full week in Costa Rica. It has been a long week of training, and for those who know me a long week of early mornings. It is fabulous though I must admit. The first morning in the jungle I was awoken by the howler monkeys about 4:30, yes they really do howl quite like a dog (Good thing you did not buy me an alarm clock Jacq) I think they know when new people have arrived because they have not sounded off as much since that first morning.

It is quite beautiful here and I must say one of my favorite features is the canal the camp is on. It was about a 45 minute boat ride down rivers an canals to get to the base. It is so beautiful the way the thick lush jungle just goes straight up from the rivers edge. We have been out on the water several times as it is the only way to and from the camp. I enjoy the beauty each time, day or night. Most of this past week has been spent in class training for the different surveys we do: Turtle morning census, turtle night survey, canal bird survey, Rafia trail bird survey and the infamous Jaguar walk.

After 4 days in class I was in the last group to go out for a turtle walk. I did the morning census which is a six mile walk on the beach starting at 6:30 we look for tracks and nests from the night before. It was great because a green and a Hawks-bill had come up right near each other and their paths crossed and ran adjacent to each other. Hello everyone it has been quite some time since I last wrote and a lot has happened. Turtle nesting season has ended I did my last morning census on 10-30.

I really miss these morning walks and the night ones even more. What we do now that nesting is over, is excavations. As I talked about before when we work the turtle we triangulate the nest, this is so 70 days later we can go back and excavate it to see how many turtles have hatched. I did my first excavation the other day and out off 121 eggs 114 hatched. The other eggs did not due to mites, ants and grubs. Don is here visiting getting a taste of expedition life and he went on an excavation yesterday that was successful as well.

The reason I say successful is some nests are poached and some are a real mess full of only partially developed turtles or worse yet developed but dead turtles. I have been working on the different bird surveys over the past couple weeks. My favorite bird surveys are the ones out on the canals where we canoe for hours. Some of these canals are quite narrow and have the most gorgeous trees towering above. We saw some caimen and otters on Caño Chiquero the other day, it is a nice treat to see the other wild life.

I have done 2 Jag walks since I last wrote. It is an exciting time in our Jag research, we received 6 cameras last week. We have been doing jag cam walks to figure out the best place to put these cameras in hope of catching a jaguar going onto the beach or leaving. The last jag walks I have been on 12 of the 15 miles we had tracks all over the beach. That is a lot of activity. We have a mom and two grown cubs and two other adults that we can determine from the tracks we find.

On my walk two weeks ago we came across a turtle nest that was being raided by Kuwaiti's so we shooed them away and were able to save over 80 baby turtles. It was so great to dig out the turtles and take them down the beach to the high tide line and let them free and watch them got towards the ocean. Then not 10 meters down the beach we came across another nest where all the babies were teaming at the top just ready to burst out of the nest. We had to help these guys as well because they would have fried on the hot sand before they got to the ocean.

It was such a great high, it is so cool to see all those babies just streaming to the ocean. This was a great walk and I tell you all this nature is really starting to grow on me. Don was able to do a jag cam walk on Friday when I did my Jag walk so around mile 16 we caught up with his group. I am really glad he got to do this as it is one of the most exciting things we have going on right now. We have not spent all our time in Tortugero, Don came to visit over my long weekend break.

We went to Tamorindo on the Pacific coast. This is my favorite town so far in Costa Rica. It is quaint yet developed, it has nice shops and restaurants, so I was able to enjoy some good food. We went SCUBA diving and saw some white tip reef sharks, spotted eagle rays, sea snakes (very deadly) moray eels and of course lots of fish. Our hotel was beautiful and away from town but a quick walk 100 meters down the path and we were in town. I am telling you the little things in life like a hot shower are just priceless. :-)

Last is my snake story. I did my first night jungle walk, we were all busy looking up into the canopy looking for eye reflections. Well 2 people stepped right over a ferdelance and the third person was looking down and announced ferdelance as she stepped over it! This is a very deadly snake and this one was big enough to kill a human. We all were fine but it was a bit exciting. Off for now hope all is well with everyone! Big hugs and kisses for Emily, Hayden, William and Olivia!!!! Pictures are here